In the Days of the Comet

N THE

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far as it has affected my own life and the lives of one or tw

ecessary to my own secure mental continuity. The passage of years brings a man at last to retrospection; at seventy-two one's youth is far more important than it was at forty. And I am out of touch with my youth. The old life seems so cut off from the new, so alien and so unreasonable, that at times I find it bordering upon the incredible. The data have gone, the buildings and places. I stopped dead the other afternoon in my walk across the moor, where once the dismal outskirts of Swathinglea straggled toward Leet, and asked, "Was it here indeed that I crouched among the weeds and refuse and broken crockery and loaded my revolver ready for murder? Did ever such a thing hap

odor of an ill-trimmed lamp, burning cheap paraffin. Lighting by electricity had then been perfected for fifteen years, but still the larger portion of the world used these lamps. All this first scene will go, in m

. There were several big plaster-rimmed wounds in this, caused by Parload's ineffectual attempts to get nails into the wall, whereby there might hang pictures. One nail had hit between two bricks and got home, and from this depended, sustained a little insecurely by frayed and knotted blind-cord, Parload's hanging bookshelves, planks painted over with a treacly blue enamel and further decorated by a fringe of pinked American cloth insecurely fixed by tacks. Below this was a little table that behaved with a mulish vindictiveness to any knee that was thrust beneath it suddenly; it was cover

h scratched enamel of chocolate hue, on which a small isla

he bowl of a broken corn-cob pipe were visible behind the bars, and in the corner and rather thrust away was an angular japanned coal-box with a damaged hinge. It was the custom in those days to warm every room separately from a

room, and veiled his boxes and suchlike oddments, and invading the two corners of the window were

f some nightmare timber. The washhandstand so made had evidently had a prolonged career of violent use, had been chipped, kicked, splintered, punched, stained, scorched, hammered, dessicated, damped, and defiled, had met indeed with almost every possible adventure except a conflagration or a scrubbing, until at last it had come to this high refuge of Parload's attic to sustain the simple requirements of Parload's personal cleanliness. There were, in chief, a basin and a jug of water and a slop-pail of tin, and, further, a piece of yellow soap in a tray, a tooth-brush, a rat-tailed shaving brush, one huckaback

ts and completed this inventory of a "bed-sitting-room" as I knew it before the Change. But I had forgotten-there was also a chair with a "squab" that apologi

tention at that time to the slightest degree. I took all this grimy unpleasantness as if it were the most natural and proper setting for existence imaginable. It was the world as I knew it. My mind was entirely occupied then by graver an

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ss in hand, and sought and found and was un

annoyances and bitterness, I wanted to open my heart to him-at least I wanted to relieve my heart by some romantic rendering of my troubles-and I gave but little heed to

each other's secret of religious doubt, we had confided to one another a common interest in Socialism, he had come twice to supper at my mother's on a Sunday night, and I was free of his apartment. He was then a tall, flaxen-haired, gawky youth, with a disproportionate development of neck and wrist, and capable of vast enthusiasm; he gave two evenings a week to the evening classes of the organized science school in Overcastle, physiography was his favorite "subject," and through this insidious opening of his mind the wonder of outer space had come to take possession of his soul. He had commandeered an old opera-glass from his uncle who farmed at Leet over the moors, he had bought a

n as though his first emphasis

e. "Wouldn't y

how that the spectroscope was already sounding its chemical secrets, perplexed by the unprecedented band in the green, how it was even now being photographed in the very act of unwinding-in an unusual direction-a sunward tail (which presently it wound up again), and all the while in a sort of undertow I w

its to the gardener's cottage at Checkshill Towers still kept the friends in touch. Commonly I went with her. And I remember it was in the dusk of one bright evening in July, one of those long golden evenings that do not so much give way to night as admit at last, upon courtesy, the moon and a choice retinue of stars, that Nettie and I, at the pond of goldfish where the yew-bordered walks converged, made our shy beginners' vow. I remember still-something will al

ts of a rare and evanescent beauty that seem no longer possible in my experience. The great Change has come for ever more, happiness and beauty are our atmosphere, there is peace on earth and good will to all men. None would dare to dream of returning to the sorrows of the former time, and yet that misery was pierced, ever and again its gray curtain was stabbed through a

ng now and to have been young then as w

h in ill-fitting ready-made clothing, and Nettie-Indeed Nettie is badly dressed, and her attitude is more than a little stiff; but I can see her through the picture, and her living bri

that escapes description. There was a sort of gravity in her eyes. There was something, a matter of the minutest diffe

t Checkshill and so to our dingy basement in Clayton, and I saw no more of Nettie-except that I saw her in my thoughts-for nearly a year. But at our next meeting it was decided that we must correspond, and this we did with much elaboration of secrecy, for Nettie would have no one at home, no

use for the first time we came into more than s

gnarled and sometimes chapped with scrubbing, in black, carefully mended gloves, assumed her old black silk dress and bonnet and took me, unnaturally clean and sweet also, to church. There we sang and bowed and heard sonorous prayers and joined in sonorous responses, and rose with a congregational sigh refreshed and relieved when the doxology, with its opening "Now to God the Father, God the Son," bowed out the tame, brief sermon. There was a hell in that religion of my mother's, a red-haired hell of curly flames that had once been very terrible; there was a devil, who was also ex officio the British King's enemy, and much denunciation of the wicked lusts of the flesh; we were expected to believe that most of our poor unhappy world was to atone for its muddle and trouble here by suffering exquisite torments for ever after, world without

ings quite seriously, the fiery hell and God's vindictiveness at any neglect, as though they were as much a matter of f

ng after I left school, and with the best intentions in the world and to anticipate the poison of the times, he

rose as well as his atmospheric verse. I was soon ripe for blatant unbelief. And at the Young Men's Christian Association I presently made the acquaintance of Parload, who told me, under promises of the most sinister secrecy, that he was "a Socialist out and out." He lent me several copies of a periodical with the clamant title of The Clarion, which was just taking up a crusade against the accepted religion. Th

cillating between the furtive and the defiant. People begin to find Shelley-for all his melody-noisy and ill conditioned now because his Anarchs have vanished, yet there was a time when novel thought HAD to go to that tune of breaking glass. It becomes a little difficult to imagine the yeasty state of mind, the disposition to shout and say, "Yah!" at constituted authority, to sustain a persistent note of provocation

would condemn me altogether as having been a very silly, posturing, emotional hobbledehoy indeed and quite like my faded photograph. And when I try to recall what exact

in the use of the word "dear," and I remember being first puzzled and then, when I understood, delighted, because she had written "Willie A

of her eyes, of her touch, of her sweet and delightful presence, but when I sat down to write I thought of Shelley and Burns and myself, and other such irrelevant matters. When one is in love, in this fermenting way, it is harder to make love than it is when one does not love at all. And as for Nettie, she loved, I know, not me but those gentle mysteries. It was not my voice should rouse her dreams to passion. . . So our letters continued to jar. Then suddenly she wrote me one doubting whether she could ever care for any one who was a Socialist and did not believe in Church, and then hard upon it came anot

did I

kissed and whispered and come so close in the little adventurous familiarities of the young, shocked me profoundly. I! I! And Rawdon didn't find me indispensable either. I felt I was suddenly repudiated by the un

some extraordinary, swift manner make the fortune of

or the rest, Frobisher might fail me. That, however, was a secondary issue. The predominant affair was with Nettie. I found my mind thick-s

said Parloa

?" sa

s iron-works, and the smoke co

t as I was ripe to discha

ry likely I shall have

a rise in my wages, a

nd going on upon the

lear out of Clayto

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ut down the opera-g

ange just now," he sai

as much, in a le

'm tired," I said, "of humdrum drudgery for other men. One may as w

at altogether," began

, intensely generalizing, diffusely personal talks that will be dear to the hearts of inte

f it, though its circumstances and atmosphere stand out, a sharp, clear picture in my mind. I posed after my manner and behaved

I said I can remember. "I wish at times," said I, with a gesture at the heavens, "that comet of yours or some such thing woul

and the thought seem

life," he said irrelevantly, when pres

t wo

things back. It would only make what was le

YTHING be left of

ether up the narrow street outside his lodging, up the st

me, and wellnigh out of the imagination of all those who are younger by a generation than I. You cannot see, as I can see, the dark empty way between the mean houses, the dark empty way lit by a bleary gas-lamp at the corner, you cannot feel the hard checkered pavement under your boots, you cannot mark the dimly lit windows here and there,

ing fire into the night. A hazy movement of people swayed along that road, and we heard the voice of an itinerant preacher from a waste place between the houses. You cannot see these things as I can see them, nor can you

hromatic discord; pill vendors and preachers, theaters and charities, marvelous soaps and astonishing pickles, typewriting machines and sewing machines, mingled in a sort of visualized c

ory, and so to the high road. The high road ascended in a curve past a few houses and a beerhouse or so,

ry, pot-bank, and furnace, transfigured and assimilated by the night. The dust-laden atmosphere that was gray oppression through the day became at sundown a mystery of deep translucent colors, of blues and purples, of somber and vivid reds, of strange bright clearnesses of green and yellow athwart the darkling sky. Each upstart furnace, when its monarch sun had gone, crowned itself with flames, the dark cinder heaps began to glow with quivering fires, and each pot-bank squatted rebellious in a volcanic coronet of light. The

d near forgotten, Parload had rediscovered a realm that w

parks and great mansions, the spire of a distant cathedral, and sometimes when the weather was near raining, the crests of remote mountains hung clearly in the sk

ide the rutted road and argued out our perplexities, it seemed

idst their wretched homes like saprophytes amidst a general corruption, and on the other, in space, freedom, and dignity, scarce heeding the few cottages, as overcrowded as they were picturesque, in which the laborers festered, lived the landlords and masters who owned pot-banks and forge and farm and mine. Far away, distant, beauti

all the victims of their deliberate villainies. No doubt they winked and chuckled over their rare wines, amidst their dazzling, wickedly dressed women, and plotted further grinding for the faces of the poor. And amidst all the squalor on the other hand, amidst brutalities, ignorance, and drunkenness, suffered multitudinously their blameless v

it hot, and everything woul

e were full of heady hopes for the near triumph of our doctrine, more often our mood was hot resentment at the wickedness and stupidity that delayed so plain and simple a reconstruction of the order of the world. Then we grew malignant, and thought of barricades and significant violence

t if that could be done by slaying the hydra, I might drag its carcass to the feet o

ed to Parload that night. You figure us as little black figures, unprepossessing in the outline, set in the midst of th

u must get yourself out of health by unwise drinking and eating, and out of condition by neglecting your exercise, then you must contrive to be worried very much and made very anxious and uncomfortable, and then you must work very hard for four or five days and for long hours every day at something too petty to be interesting, too complex to be mechanical, and without any personal significance to you whatever. This done, get straightway into a room that is not

d simply, that changed and evaded solution, it was in an atmosphere that had corrupted and thickened past breathing; there was no thorough cool thinking

ut read-read the newspapers of that time. Every age becomes mitigated and a little ennobled in our minds as it recedes into the past. It is th

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arload I was

ngster whose troubles I recall. I see him vulgarly theatrical, egotistical, insincere, indeed I do not like him save with that instinctive material sympathy that is the fruit of incessant intimac

obsessed by the congenial notion of "scientific caution." I did not remark that while my hands were chiefly useful for gesticulation or holding a pen Parload's hands could do all sorts of things, and I did not think therefore that fibers must run from those fingers to something in his brain. Nor, though I bragged perpetually of my shorthand, of my literature, of my indispensable share in Rawdon's business, did Parload lay stress

of that industrial blind alley up which it seemed our lives were thrust. But ever and again I glanced at other things. Nettie was always there in the background of my mind, regarding me enigmatically. It was part

smarted in his eyes. Indeed, now in many particulars I cannot disentangle this harangue of which I tell from many of the things I may have said in other talks to Parlo

arload, suddenly. "It won't do

e very important assets to our par

that I must not leave Rawdon's. I simply wanted to abuse my employer to Parload. But I talked myself quite out of touch with all the cogent reaso

uch longer," I said to Pa

times coming,"

t wi

roducing, and they mean to dump. The i

e. Pot-banks

r in borax? N

ave you

masters don't stick to one business as they used to do. I can tell that much. Half the valley may be 'playing' befo

for a man, a time of stagnation and dreary hungry loafing day after day. Such i

tick to Rawdon'

, affecting a

trouble," s

eculation and corners and trusts make things go from bad to worse. Why should I cower in Rawdon's office, like a frightened dog, while hunge

very well,"

ps with all these Rawdons. I think perhaps if I w

," said Parload, in

S a dif

he future of the world-why should one even sacrifice one's own

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ted from Parload and c

there was an old lady, Miss Holroyd, who painted flowers on china and maintained her blind sister in an adjacent room; my mother and I lived in the basement and slep

utiful and interesting places. These the camera company would develop for him on advantageous terms, and he would spend his evenings the year through in printing from them in order to inflict copies upon his undeserving friends. There was a long frameful of his work in the Clayton National School, for example, inscribe

em, part of the scheme of robbery that made wages serfs of Parloa

in the darkness, outside even his

her le

knew there was something wrong and t

roughly, and lit and took my candle and went off at o

ome supper f

ant any

dear

upon her, blew out my candle, and lay down at once upon

nderstand! Hers was the accepted religion, her only social ideas were blind submissions to the accepted order-to laws, to doctors, to clergymen, lawyers, masters, and all respectable persons in authority over us, and with her to believe was to fear. She knew from a thousand little signs-though still at times I went to church with her-that I was passing out of touch of all these things that ruled her life, into some terrible unknown. From things I said she could infer such clumsy co

esight so that at fifty-five she peered through cheap spectacles at my face, and saw it only dimly, filled her with a habit of anxiety, made her hands--- Her poor dear hands! Not in the whole world now could you find a woman with hands

red her curtly, left her concerned and perplexe

s letter, at my weakness and insignificance, at the things I found intolerable, and the things I could not mend. Over and over wen

s young; I had these quick transitions. I remember quite distinctly, I stood up abruptly, un

r slept that nig

sions before they had the chance of even a year or so of clear thinking; they settled down to an intense and strenuous application to some partial but immediate duty, and the growth of thought ceased in them. They set and hardened into narrow ways. Few women remained capable of a new idea after five and twenty, few men after thirty-one or two. Discontent with the thing that existed was regarded as immoral, it was certainly an annoyance, and the only protest against it, the

e very nature of the progress of the world. We did not think then that minds might grow ripe without growing rigid, or children honor their parents and still think for themselves. We were angry and hasty because we stifled in the darkness, in a poisoned and vitiated air. T

ended. I put it aside a

id the man

is fic

my s

not this ill-conditioned, squalidly

a certain Change," he said.

then saw the second fascicl